Best known for playing Rory Williams in Doctor Who, Arthur Darvill seems genuinely excited and challenged to portray Rip Hunter, a Time Master and de facto leader in Legends Of Tomorrow.

“Rip is such a complicated character, unlike anything I’ve ever had to explore before,” he shares. “The idea of getting into this guy’s brain and life was really exciting for me. He’s very front-footed, he’s got a lot of secrets, and he makes decisions. A lot of the parts that I’ve played are slightly on the back foot; reactionary characters. This was a real challenge for me, as I’ve gained in confidence as an actor and put that to the test.

“What’s interesting is that all of that stuff in the trailers is Rip making big speeches and trying to enthuse a group of people who don’t want to be enthused. There’s a lot of positivity in him, but soon you learn that he’s not actually that positive.

“He’s got some definite demons,” adds Darvill. “One of my questions when I started was, ’What are the things that trigger his energy? What are the things that make him angry?’ He’s come from a place in the future. He’s got a lot of knowledge that he’s bringing with him, and he’s trying to keep this group of people together for a common goal. It very quickly unravels and become a much bigger task for him than I think he ever anticipated.

“You see a real dark, dark future that he’s from. His role in that future was to keep the peace and to keep time constant. The Time Masters, the people he’s been working with, have their rules, and he’s far more of a rule breaker when we meet him because of what happened to him and because of the circumstances that he’s in. He’s learning what that is himself.

“I also think he anticipates at the beginning of the series, as it were, that this plan will work fairly quickly. He’s not anticipating having to spend a lot of time with all these people, but it proves to be a lot harder than he realises. And then there’s the dawning realisation that he has to spend all of his time with them, keep them happy, and keep them together and act as some kind of leader for them. In reality, he doesn’t even know how to do that.”